The NEST was created by the guy who developed the iPod for Apple. From a functionality perspective, it’s just brilliant. I’ll get back to that later.

From a game changing perspective whodda thought about going after the thermostat market? We’re all used to using those ugly beige boxes with the LCD readouts that are sometimes hard to understand and impossible to program properly. Hmmm, beige boxes that are hard to use, remind you of anything?

The NEST is this stunning, round, glowing hockey puck that is cool to use and can be managed by your smartphone or tablet. Sure, there have been home automation-style thermostats that will also monitor the moisture of your potted plants, but again, taking a cue from our friends at Microsoft, they are insanely complicated and overly burdensome to use.

I read an article of someone who visited Bill Gates’ mansion. It was the realization of Gates’ automation dream of lighting and HVAC and home entertainment control, but as the writer wrote, only Bill could operate it.

I have a friend who can’t leave the house because his wife has no idea how to work any of the automated systems he installed. TVs would be on with no audio. She would sleep in the living room because she couldn’t turn off the embedded speakers in their bedroom, which were playing a constant loop of Frank Zappa songs.

Getting back to the NEST, and now its companion product the NEST Protect smoke alarm, it’s great in-the-box thinking. In-the-box? I had heard a person talk about how out-of-the-box thinking is the wrong term. Sorry, I can’t recall the speaker, it was while ago. He said that the box was the problem. We had to fix the box. Thinking outside of it was not the solution.

The NEST fixes the in-the-box problem of the beige programmable thermostat. Using it one immediately thinks, why didn’t someone figure this out earlier? Some of this comes from the notion that this is what we’ve been doing for so long that we don’t know how to do anything else. Some of it comes from engineers thinking they know what people want without asking them. A lot of it is driven by cost.

You can tell the NEST was built around smartphone technology. It draws its power from the 5 volts the furnace generously provides controllers. But our old controller needed batteries. Why did it need batteries? Because you could see the old-style resistors, capacitors and thyristors that looked like they came from a Soviet era submarine jutting from the back of it. No one was thinking, “You know, if we used smartphone tech we could get rid of the batteries.”

Using smartphone tech would have increased the cost of the basic device. That’s bad, right? There is so much cheap crap companies had to compete with. But what if people would happily pay more for the beige box if it wasn’t beige and wasn’t a box and was easy to use, pleasant to look at, wifi enabled and controllable by smart devices?

I’m sure these questions must have been asked by someone at the beige box makers but no one was listening or too afraid to ask.

Is your product a beige box? Have you been selling it for so long that you can’t think of how it might be better even at the risk of increasing its price and losing some sales? This beige box can also be a service.

Often it just requires a change in assumptions. People have expended a lot of ink on how RIM/Blackberry blew it: arrogance, bad management, etc. But I think they blew it because their overriding engineering consideration was battery life. Some of their devices would run for a month before recharging. This caused Blackberry to focus on a small, tight operating system and low powered processors. Apple, in contrast, thought that as long as someone can plugin overnight, who cares? This would have been heresy at RIM. Who would have had the guts to go to management with that idea?

By deciding that one-day of charge was enough, it freed Apple to design a device with more powerful, albeit power-draining, processors along with an operating system that took up hundreds of megabytes of solid-state memory instead of the paltry 35 meg in the Blackberry.

There is no denying the engineering genius of the Blackberry but by deciding that one-day of batter life was good enough, it gave birth to the practical notion of a real computer in your pocket.

What assumptions are you holding onto that probably need updating? The cheese industry was declining until some clever bloke (or blokess) thought of selling it shredded as a condiment. Now cheese consumption has skyrocketed.

I won’t go into the NEST Protect here. Maybe later. It’s 5 times more expensive than the beige smoke detector it replaces, which always goes off when you’re making toast, but it’s really cool.

The only thing that makes me unhappy is that Google has bought NEST. If I don’t join Google+ are they going to turn off my heat?

Paul Chato has been many things: a graphic designer, programmer, comedian, head of network TV comedy, game producer, 3D animator, playwright, event host, director and anything else that matches his fancy. Most of the time he pulls the levers at YourWebDepartment.com.

More font options have been added to all types of navigation – Horizontal, Vertical, Top, Bottom. Those additional fonts are now also available for the banner text, which can be used on very simple websites where a banner image, typically the company logo, isn't available.

More font options have been added to all types of navigation – Horizontal, Vertical, Top, Bottom. Those additional fonts are now also available for the banner text, which can be used on very simple websites where a banner image, typically the company logo, isn't available.

In the example above, the regular font used in the content area is Callibri, whereas the main navigation is set to Bodoni.

Flavio Mester is a graphic designer as well as a systems analyst (in a distant life he was an architect). A founding partner of Your Web Department, he's responsible for the design and development of all the YWD website management platform interfaces.Google+ | Twitter | LinkedIn

I don't know of another company that's like Your Web Department. Over the years I've learned that we're quite unique in several ways. What follows is a rambling dissertation about what we are and are not based on the kinds of individuals and companies we compete against. I hope this all makes sense.

We've built Your Web Department to be the obvious choice for a wide range of website needs. I think we are the 'Momma Bear' of web shops; not too small and not too large. We're just right.

We're bigger than the one person web programmer who who can get quickly overwhelmed with work.

We're there when many other one-person-shops fold, disappear or move on to other things.

We are completely dedicated to the building and launching of websites. We are not a design shop that does print and a bit of web because one person knows how to program a bit, or worse, a shop with no programmers subbing out to programmers who they have no idea what they are really doing. This is not to disparage designers. Most have no idea who to hook up with for websites. (May I suggest ourselves?)

We are developers with a design aesthetic. And we are also designers who can code.

We are developers who have decided on limits as to what we are willing to do. Many programmers will say yes to every request. We say no when it does not fit our business model. We know our limits. Offering great surface at a great price fits many business requirements.

We won't take on the huge jobs because we would not be able to service our customers.

Service is our product.

We will tell customers when social media makes no sense.

We have our own proprietary platform that we have been building since 2007. We also offer WordPress now. We have an insane amount of experience in the area of website best practices.

We have been the one source of continuity for many small to medium companies as their marketing people come and go. We are always there to train the new employee. Paul Chato President, YWD Inc.

Paul Chato has been many things: a graphic designer, programmer, comedian, head of network TV comedy, game producer, 3D animator, playwright, event host, director and anything else that matches his fancy. Most of the time he pulls the levers at YourWebDepartment.com.

With the rollout of the iPhone 5s it seems that there are some excellent small businesses learnings embedded in it. While most small businesses have barely a few stamps left over for marketing, mega companies like Apple still can offer some useful lessons for us small fries. Case in point, what is it that your business does, or can do, that is really useful for your customers?

Okay, I can hear you yelling at me already, "My product/service/manufacturing process/book/videos/massage technique IS what is useful or I wouldn't be doing it."

Stop, I can hear you. I get it. The core thing you do is why you got into business in the first place, but are you innovating? Are you offering different ways of approaching or understanding the value of your offering? Are you using reductionism to find the one simple truth that will let people in on the truth of your business without a long-winded explanation?

There are a million unique things about Your Web Department that makes us different from everyone else, but frankly, no one cares. We build websites. At the beginning it was enough to promote that you could manage the website yourself. Everyone can do that now. It doesn't matter if we might do it better. Not good enough.

The smartphone war between Samsung and Apple has become nasty, but in a fun way. The Samsung ad of a couple of years ago making fun of people lined up to buy an iPhone when Samsung already had 'the next big thing' in stores was a fantastic bit of marketing. You had to give Sammy a tip of the hat for turning the tables on Apple's, I'm a PC campaign.

A lot of pundits have weighed in since the iPhone 5s was released. "Screen not big enough." "Finger print recognition, a gimmick." "No one needs a 64 bit processor in a phone." "Gold phone is silly."

Well, sales figures are in and the iPhone 5s is the hottest phone around. (Please, no Android is taking over screeds. Not the point of this post.) In Japan it's crushing the competition. It's even doing well in Korea, Sammy's home.

So let's survey the marketing terrain. Samsung established its Next Big Thing slogan. It's a great slogan as long as you can keep living up to it. Apple has the same problem with it's 'innovator' brand promise. Samsung has also managed the neat trick of pitching themselves as the underdog in this fight even though Apple does not also build oil tankers and weapons for killing people. Is Samsung going to work that into their Galaxy S4 ads? I don't think so.

Getting back to the discussion at hand, what are the differentiators that we are left with between the two products. Screen size, of course, is a valid one. A point for Sammy. Android versus iOS? Let's call that a draw. Then there's the phone bumping thing in the ad for sharing files. Sure looked cool. No one is using it. It turns out that it wasn't much of a game changer. This feature was in a couple of ads, so Sammy definitely thought it was essential.

The iPhone 5s has the much ridiculed (by some major pundits) finger print sensor. No more passwords. Touch the button and you're in. Well, it turns out that people LOVE it. They love the convenience of getting rid of an inconvenience; namely typing in a password over and over again.

And how about that 64 bit processor? Sure, no one understands the benefits of it, but it's twice as big as 32 bit, which is what all other phones use. A phone-bump is just a bump but faster is good for everything, right?

Stupid gold phone. How irrelevant. Apple can't make them fast enough, especially for the Asian markets.

All three were ridiculed by the press. Yet these are the three things driving iPhone 5s sales. Don't forget the original iPhone got a rough ride and the iPad was mercilessly mocked. Clearly Apple knows something we don't.

So there you have it. Is your big innovation just a phone-bump, or is it a finger print sensor? Be honest with yourself.

At Your Web Department we experimented with the notion of "It's free until you go live."

Didn't work.

Then we tried: "We'll build your website for free."

That worked.

The first had little value to the end user. The second had HUGE value. The end product of building a website is a website. The building part is not the product. That was the mistake we made with the first campaign. And maybe we were also a bit afraid of giving away too much. But then we crunched the numbers and figured out a way to build a website for free and make it work for both our customers and our business.

Is Samsung still touting the phone-bump as a defining capability? No. Because it was useless. Looked cool in ads, but useless. And while the initial industry reaction was to poo poo Apple's 64 bit system-on-a-chip processor I can bet you dollars to donuts that Samsung and every other chip manufacturer have nailed the shoes of their chip scientists to the floor and told them they won't be leaving the shop until they can get their own 64 bit chip out tomorrow.

Everyone will have a 64 bit phone out next year. Apple still hasn't bothered to incorporate the phone-bump (There is a 3rd party software Bump, which does that.). Apple did create something better, AirDrop, but you're not seeing Apple advertise it because its perceived value is limited. In other words few people get it. Gold phone, yum.

The lesson here is that whatever innovation you come up with, your customers really have to understand it easily, quickly and love it.

Paul Chato has been many things: a graphic designer, programmer, comedian, head of network TV comedy, game producer, 3D animator, playwright, event host, director and anything else that matches his fancy. Most of the time he pulls the levers at YourWebDepartment.com.

It has been a very busy month for us here at YWD. Usually, December slows down but we are building websites like elves. While we’re happy for the business a couple in particular have disturbing origins. In both cases the customers paid experienced website developers to build their websites and have nothing to show for it except for a lighter bank account.

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated occurance. But to have two such jobs come in in a matter of a couple of weeks is a bit disturbing. The story is always the same. People inexperienced with websites think they’ve hired experts, pay them money, get started, developer demands more money for changes the customer asks for that were not part of the original spec, which I’m sure never existed, and nothing ever goes live because it’s not quite ready and the developer keeps asking for more money.

Now, I’m not accusing the developers of being crooks. Perhaps this came out of a misunderstanding between the developer and the customer as to what is involved with building a website. That can happen. The problem is that everyone assumes that everyone knows what is going on, what is in their minds.

Let me write right off the bat that the customer is often really a babe in the woods when it comes to websites and any developer who blames the customer is either incompetent or an ass. The developer must make it their job to meticulously explain the implications of a customer’s request and provide the consequences of same. I tell people our main product is service by offering choices and letting the customer make the decision.

Anyway, it just bugs me that our business if rife with people that just don’t do the right thing and end up screwing people even if that was not their intension. There is no website builder accreditation group. I don’t know if we’d be better off with such a layer of bureaucracy but it makes everyone this this business looks bad when such things happen.

Paul Chato has been many things: a graphic designer, programmer, comedian, head of network TV comedy, game producer, 3D animator, playwright, event host, director and anything else that matches his fancy. Most of the time he pulls the levers at YourWebDepartment.com.

Would you like to know which images people are pinning from your website? Pinterest has launched a new tool for site owners that lets you see how well your pages are performing on that popular social network.

Would you like to know which images people are pinning from your website? Pinterest has launched a new tool for site owners that lets you see how well your pages are performing on that popular social network. It's called Pinterest Web Analytics and it's available to companies with a verified website.

But how do you verify your business website on Pinterest? It's easy. First, go to your Pinterest page and select Settings from the pulldown menu on the top right.

Scroll down until you see the Website field. Enter your website name there and then click the Verify Website button.

Your Web Department uses the meta tag method for verification. So click the Verify with a meta tag link at the bottom.

Pinterest will then generate a key that's specific to your website, and display it on a field. Highlight just the key (the long sequence of numbers and letters, similar to the one below) and copy it.

Now go to the back-end of your website in Your Web Department and click Tools on the main toolbar. Select the Google, Yahoo, Bing, Pinterest Verify Ownership tool. Paste the key you just copied into the Pinterest field and click Save. There's just one more step after that.

Go back to Pinterest and finish the verification process. After a dew seconds, Pinterest should inform you that it has successfully verified your website.

After that, if you go to your Pinterest profile, you'll see a checkmark beside you website name indicating it has been verified:

When your website is verified, people will see a checkmark next to your domain in search results. They will also see the full website URL and checkmark on your profile. And you will be able to access the analytics information that's now being provided by Pinterest.

Flavio Mester is a graphic designer as well as a systems analyst (in a distant life he was an architect). A founding partner of Your Web Department, he's responsible for the design and development of all the YWD website management platform interfaces.Google+ | Twitter | LinkedIn

Frank Trotz is a Canadian artist who creates one of a kind ceramic pieces. His work is filled with elegant movement, which we tried to convey when redesigning his website. It was a quick redesign project, but which I believe completely changed his web presence.

Flavio Mester is a graphic designer as well as a systems analyst (in a distant life he was an architect). A founding partner of Your Web Department, he's responsible for the design and development of all the YWD website management platform interfaces.Google+ | Twitter | LinkedIn

So, I finally got my personal project launched on Kickstarter. (GUNI- A comedy web series) For those of you who haven’t heard about it, Kickstarter started the whole crowdsourced funding trend. It was available in the U.S. and Britain, but only came to Canada in the summer.

What’s it for? It’s for funding artistic projects that have a definite deadline. You can fund a coffee table book, a movie, TV show, a record recording, a play, games, fashion, art and many more including electronic devices. You can’t fund tuition, buy real estate, no self-help books or videos and no bath, beauty or cosmetic products.

Can you use it for your business? Absolutely, if you create any of the products I listed above. Will it fund smartphone app development? Yes, but most seem to be part of some software/hardware control solution. It's worth looking into it as long as the funds are for a final product and not just, 'ongoing database development.'

Now I’m fighting with everyone else there to get attention. Their system is great. Lots of good video resources, the management interface is excellent but don’t expect to just get onto Kickstarter and get your project funded.

Sure, I’ve already found people who swim the Kickstarter waters and fund things they like. (Thank you Bryan!) But if you don’t have a pre-defined support network of friends and family to sort of guarantee the successful funding of your project then don’t bother. The chance of you catching the attention of the wider Kickstarter followers is the same as trying to create a viral video. You can’t plan on it.

It also depends on how much you’re asking for. Many people just want $500. We want $50,000.That’s out of the Kickstarter sweet spot of between $100 and $10,000. Of course there are the legendary projects that asked for some minuscule amount and got hundreds of thousands. We can all dream.

A lot of worthwhile projects get funded that otherwise would not see the light of day. Looking at their website they indicate “since 2009, 5.1 million people have pledged $854 million, funding 51,000 creative projects.” This statement is a bit misleading. 51,000 projects did not collect $845 million. You see, in Kickstarter, if you don’t reach your pre-determined pledge level, you get nada. Zip. Rien. You can go over, but if you miss it under, you don’t get your cash and pledgers don’t get their credit card dinged.

Anyway, hope to report further as this journey continues. One thing I’ve already learned, is that Facebook ‘Likes’ don’t mean squat. There’s something pernicious about those Likes. It makes people feel like they’ve contributed. “Oh you’re trying to get money for your kid’s cancer treatment? Well, I’ll just Like it. There, my work is done. I feel better now. I hope you appreciated my Like.”

“My, that Kickstarter project Paul just put on his wall looks wonderful. He’s a good friend. I will Like if for him. There. Done.”

No, dimwit, I’m asking you to contribute to my bloody project. $1 is the minimum pledge. Don’t Like it, do it!

Paul Chato has been many things: a graphic designer, programmer, comedian, head of network TV comedy, game producer, 3D animator, playwright, event host, director and anything else that matches his fancy. Most of the time he pulls the levers at YourWebDepartment.com.

Your Web Department now integrates seamlessly with SlideShare, the world's largest community for sharing presentations. You can easily insert any slideshows uploaded there – either by you or by others – into your YWD website. Here’s how.

As you may know, Your Web Department offers a nifty Image Gallery tool that lets you create and customize interactive image slideshows. But sometimes it may be interesting to simply upload a slideshow to your website that you created in PowerPoint for instance and share it with the largest number of people possible.

Your Web Department now integrates seamlessly with SlideShare, the world's largest community for sharing presentations. You can easily insert any slideshows uploaded there – either by you or by others – into your YWD website. Here’s how.

First, go to to http://www.slideshare.net and select the slideshow you’d like to add to your website. In this example, we will not be showing how you can upload your own slideshow there, but it’s pretty straightforward. By the way, creating an account there is free (they also offer paid plans with additional features).

Click the slideshow’s Share button:

Highlight and copy the contents of the URL field:

Now go to your website’s back-end in Your Web Department, to the page where you’d like to insert the slideshow. You’ll be using a Word Processor content block for that (either an existing one or new). Click the Insert YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr, etc. icon:

Although it’s most frequently used to insert YouTube videos, this tool is now extremely versatile and can handle a multitude of other services, including SlideShare. Paste the URL you just copied there, click OK and save.

Flavio Mester is a graphic designer as well as a systems analyst (in a distant life he was an architect). A founding partner of Your Web Department, he's responsible for the design and development of all the YWD website management platform interfaces.Google+ | Twitter | LinkedIn

Facebook can be an important factor in driving traffic to your website. If your website contains a blog, you can use Facebook as the interface people will use to enter their own comments to your posts (Your Web Department also lets you use Disqus, as well as YWD’s own comments engine). However, sometimes people can enter spam or profanity there, which you’d like to remove for obvious reasons. But in order for you to be able to moderate the comments, Facebook needs to verify that you’re the person “in charge”.

The steps below explain how you can add Facebook comments to your YWD blog and also how to moderate the comments.

Obtaining the Facebook Application ID for your blog

This is required so Facebook can be used as the comments engine for your blog.

Moderating the comments

Flavio Mester is a graphic designer as well as a systems analyst (in a distant life he was an architect). A founding partner of Your Web Department, he's responsible for the design and development of all the YWD website management platform interfaces.Google+ | Twitter | LinkedIn